Wholly and completely.
Utter devastation.
He recoils slightly, his eyes widening, like I said something that he can’t possibly comprehend. “I prevented you from making the biggest mistake of your life.”
“No, you didn’t, Connor.” I shake my head, fighting the welling tears that threaten to give away how fresh those feelings somehow still are. “You pushed me into the arms of it.”
10
RAVEN
Connor has the audacity to look confused or maybe even angry with my response. As if I am the one who did something hurtful that night instead of the other way around. As if I somehow caused all these years of hostility and animosity.
Any potential softening of my hatred for the man sitting in front of me that might have even been a glimmer of a possibility before vanishes as I push to my feet. “You really don’t get it at all, do you?”
Lightning flashes through the window, illuminating his glower from where he still sits in the chair. That vulnerability and softness that was there only a few minutes ago is gone. The man looking back at me is the one I hate, the one who broke my heart. “I don’t, so why don’t you explain it to me?”
I shove my hands through my sleep-tousled hair, my frustration growing as the old feelings settle deeply into my chest again. Of all the things I never wanted to relive, that night has always been damn near the top of that list. To have to open up about it after fifteen years with the very person who caused all the anguish seems like some sort of sick joke, about as bad as being trapped on a remote mountain in a tiny cabin with him.
“You destroyed me that day, Connor McBride.”
It’s the only word I can think of to sum up how it felt in that moment and how I continued to view it in the years since, as I’ve allowed my hurt and anger to grow.
His mouth falls open, and he gapes at me for a few seconds. “You can’t be fucking serious.” He finally shoves to his feet, towering over me, his massive bare chest, exposed in his cutoff shirt, heaving, his skin still slick with the sweat that covered it during his nightmare. “Why the hell can’t you ever see when I’m protecting you?”
“You didn’t protect me that day, Connor.” I fight the way my voice wants to crack on the next words. “You rejected me.”
He presses his lips together as if he’s biting back his response, and I can feel his anger building, the energy and crackle of it as palpable as that of the storm outside. It’s the same hatred I felt that day, and every day since, from him.
The fact that I never noticed it before then, that I had somehow convinced myself that he was different, is what made it even worse.
I’ve held all this in for so long, kept it locked up in an impenetrable vault, and now that the door has been opened, I don’t know how to stop the flow of emotions that rushes out.
I poke my finger into his chest, his hot, hard skin barely giving way under the pressure. “You looked at me like I was a chewed piece of gum stuck on the bottom of your fucking shoe that you needed to scrape off, and I have never felt worse about myself than I did in that fucking moment.”
My voice wavers slightly on those final words, and I have to bite back anything else I might want to say because I don’t trust myself not to open my mouth without releasing the sob that sits lodged at the base of my throat.
Connor closes his eyes, clenching them as tightly as he does his fists at his sides. “You were fifteen, Raven…”
“And?”
When he opens his eyes again, they’re that onyx that always seems to be bottomless. “You were a freshman. You were fifteen, and you were drunk. You would’ve regretted it.”
I dig my fingernail deeply into his chest, wanting to hurt him as badly as he has me. “Fuck you, Connor.”
He stands his ground, not backing down, not retreating a step to get away from the pressure of my finger and nail biting into his skin. “I know you wanted to, but it was the right decision not to.”
My mouth falls open and I release an incredulous laugh. “You arrogant son of a bitch.”
Of course, Connor Fucking McBride would try to justify the way he treated me by taking my words and throwing them back at me with such precision.
That’s what he’s so damn good at.
I jerk my hand away from him, hating the physical reminder of his unyielding nature right under my fingertips. It was that same attitude he carried that night—holier than thou, arrogant, and determined to hurt me.
What did I ever see in him?
It’s hard to know now, after so much time, so much hostility. After that night, I never looked at him the same way. I couldn’t. Not when it had exposed how he really felt about me.
